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Labour Party
The Labour Party is a social democratic party in the United Kingdom, founded in 1900. The party was born out of the frustration of the working-class at their inability to field parliamentary candidates through the Liberal Party, which at the time was the dominant social reform party in Britain. After World War I, the divisions within the Liberal Party, greater enfranchisement, and the party's democratic socialist platform led to Labour making great strides, and, by 1922, the Labour Party had now become the Conservative Party's greatest opponent. In 1924 and from 1929 to 1931, Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald served as Prime Minister, and it took part in Winston Churchill's wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945 during World War II. In 1945, Clement Attlee led the party to a spectacular recovery, winning control of the government. The party supported the postwar Keynesian consensus, establishing a mixed economy. The Labour Party expanded healthcare through the National Health Service and committed itself to the pursuit of full employment, but postwar economic recovery proved slow, leading to Labour losing the 1951 election to the Conservatives. During the 1950s, the party was divided between Aneurin Bevan's socialist faction and Hugh Gaitskell's revisionist faction, with the latter supporting the de-emphasization of nationalization. From 1964 to 1970, Labour was in power under Harold Wilson, and he supported corporatism and indicative economic planning. From 1974 to 1979, the party again held power under Wilson and James Callaghan, and it supported European integration and devolution in Scotland and Wales. The party's shift towards social democracy hurt its trade union allies, and its failure to deal with the economic recession led to its loss of the 1979 elections to Margaret Thatcher. During the 1980s, Labour dealt with internal turmoil, with its right wing forming the UK Social Democratic Party in 1981. Michael Foot's 1983 election manifesto, called "the longest suicide note in history" by Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, called for nationalization of industry, economic planning, unilateral nuclear disarmament, and Euroscepticism, leading to the party's landslide defeat at the hands of the Conservatives. Later that year, Neil Kinnock replaced Foot as Labour leader, and he eliminated the Trotskyist Militant Tendency wing of the party, among other extremist wings. The party would come to support a mixed economy, European integration, devolution, voting reform, and reform of the House of Lords, while dropping its commitments to unilateral disarmament and nationalization. This "New Labour" agenda won the party the 1997 elections, and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would keep Labour in power until 2010. Blair abolished the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords, introduced devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, and made peace with the IRA in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. However, his authoritarian style and his support of the United States in the Iraq War of 2003 proved to be controversial, and the party lost the 2010 elections due to Brown's inability to deal with an economic crisis. In 2015, left-leaning Jeremy Corbyn came to lead Labour after Ed Miliband resigned due to disastrous general election results. Corbyn refused to help the "Stronger in" campaign during Brexit, and many of his shadow cabinet ministers resigned. However, he remained in power, and his party made impressive gains in the 2017 elections, ending the Conservatives' majority. The Labour Party is currently the largest center-left party in Britain. Before World War II, the Labour Party's electoral support was based mostly on blue-collar workers and middle-class socialists, and public sector members of the middle class also joined in the voting base in the 1960s. For financial support, the party relied on its strong trade union connections. However, due to Blair's alliances with corporations, some unions began to talk with the Conservatives and UK Liberal Democrats after 2002. Gallery UK Labor Party views.png|Views of the early Labor Party UK Labor views.png|Party views UK Labor Party 2.png|Logo from 1900 to 1983 UK Labor Party 3.png|Logo from 1983 to 2007 Category:British parties Category:Social democratic parties Category:Socialist parties Category:Parties